In July, State Attorney General Gary King noticed something that state Republicans would have preferred to keep hidden away. New Mexico law does not prohibit gay marriage. Of course, it doesn't specifically authorize it, either, but up until now, nobody has banned it. And any attempts to do so appear to be unconstitutional.
The Associated Press reports that King made the argument after the court asked him to weigh in on a lawsuit filed by a gay Santa Fe couple who were denied a marriage license. In his filing, King urged the court to approve more broadly of gay marriage rights in a ruling in favor of the men.On the strength of that, on Wednesday, Dona Ana County clerk Lynn Ellins, began issuing marriage certificates to gay couples in Las Cruces, NM. Nobody told him that he could - he simply noted that nobody could tell him that he couldn't.
"New Mexico’s guarantee of equal protection to its citizens demands that same-sex couples be permitted to enjoy the benefits of marriage in the same way and to the same extent as other New Mexico citizens," King said in the filing.
And today, in Albuquerque, a judge ordered the county clerk of the most populous county in New Mexico to begin issuing marriage licenses to gay couples, stating that any seeming prohibitions in New Mexico statutes against same-sex marriage "are unconstitutional and unenforceable."
In his ruling, Judge Alan Malott quoted Article II, Section 18 of the New Mexico State Constitution, which is pretty straight-forward (so to speak).
No person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law; nor shall any person be denied equal protection of the laws. Equality of rights under law shall not be denied on account of the sex of any person.So now, with roughly a hundred same-sex couples legally married in the state of New Mexico, any action by the state government (or our Republican governor Susana Martinez) will be met with an almost-unwinnable lawsuit.
So it would appear that gay marriage is here to stay in New Mexico. Not through what the GOP will undoubtedly be calling "judicial activism," but simply through strict adherence to the law.
That's gonna leave a mark - a big, rainbow-colored one.
It always comes down to the wording. Attorneys are great at pointing this out. Good for AG King and Judge Malott. And same sex couples in NM.
ReplyDelete"Equality of rights under law shall not be denied on account of the sex of any person."
ReplyDeleteWhy this wording is not found in the US constitution and that of the other 49 states, I don't know. But I can guess.
I don't know Captain and I don't care to hazard a guess. We know social morays where vastly different in 1787 and through most of our history. As wrong as it was we can be thankful more enlightened thinking is now the norm. With the obvious exception of the bastion of American Fundies and the Muslim World. There may be others but I haven't time to check.
DeleteWe need some Morays in the Swash Zone.
DeleteLook! A social moray!
DeleteI here Morays can be pretty slippery.
Deletehear... I must stop working on the smart phone.
DeleteWow. The Republicans really messed up here by not submitting some legislation to prevent this... which is good news. Maybe they were they too busy trying to restrict a woman's right to choose or passing legislation that allowed cops to ask for the identification papers of brown people?
ReplyDeleteOr maybe right wing Libertarianism just shot itself in the foot? I don't credit design behind anything people do until I have proof that it isn't just ordinary human stupidity. Not that I can understand supporting gender inequality while pretending to be a free country.
ReplyDeleteWho knows what those 18th century gentlemen would have thought of women's rights? And of course who can imagine what will be a hot item 200 years from now? Perhaps a lot of what we hold dear will have gone way beyond what we would think proper. Every new and upcoming generation becomes a bunch of reactionary old farts to the next.
We know what the authors of the Constitution thought of woman's rights since they gave no rights to women when passing their "holy" document; not to mention blacks. This in the face of all their good words. No surprise, politicians did not all of a sudden become hypocrites in the 20th century. We have yet to fulfill all the promises listed in the original Constitution and still live under some of its built in discrimination of other groups. I would be among those who think the Constitution needs a revamp, bit given today's extremism in politics, I wouldn't trust any of them to touch one word of it.
DeleteI think there was a variety of opinion, but the slave states had to be included to make it possible for there to be a United States and so there was a compromise, but the Constitution was, as I'm sure you know, designed to be revamped and amended and designed for that to be difficult for good reason.
DeleteSad that the same forces are at work now as they were then.
I suppose it's possible that New Mexico got the wording it did because they waited until the height of the Women's Lib movement (and the beginning of the Disco era, for that matter) to set up this particular entry in the Bill of Rights.
DeleteThe effective date of this amendment shall be July 1, 1973. (Adopted by the people November 7, 1972.)
In less than 200 years from now, Capt., this will be the "hot item." o
ReplyDeleteIt's actually pretty hot right now. Just ask any octopus.
I wonder do these people swat mosquitoes and do they claim alligators have a right to eat people?
ReplyDeleteThere is a group of people who practice what they call "ahimsa" or the aversion to causing the death of any living thing. It's almost a form of suicide and the practitioners wear surgical masks to avoid killing airborne critters and don't wash or brush their teeth for the same reason. They don't find a lot to eat.
Funny that some scientists find no evidence for consciousness in humans because it's so hard to define, but others have no problem attributing it to fish, but the funny thing is that nature is cruel and unconcerned and unsentimental and without killing we all die.